Last month, Grace Todd got a phone call she had been waiting three years for.
Since April 2023, Todd, a single mom and University of Texas at Austin graduate student living off a $35,000 stipend, has paid more than $900 a month for her daughter Clementine’s daycare tuition — the cheapest option she could find.
But last month, a case manager gave her a new rate: $150 a month.
“Which is insane,” she said. “Being able to save for the first time is going to be great.”
Todd was on the state’s waiting list for affordable childcare scholarships. But the scholarship she ended up getting was from Raising Travis County, an affordable child care program created by a tax increase voters approved in 2024. The measure generates $75 million annually and raised the average county homeowner’s tax bill $126 a year.
The program is the first of its kind in Texas, and one of a slim few in the nation.
Leah Meunier, the strategic adviser of Raising Travis County, said one of the program’s top priorities is helping the thousands of kids 3 years and under, like Clementine, get off the state’s waitlist.
A little over a year into Raising Travis County’s creation, nearly 300 kids have received affordable childcare scholarships. The program’s leaders expect that number to jump to 1,000 by October. And families just now signing up for scholarships are waiting months instead of years.
“That was one of our first priorities,” Meunier said. ”Was to begin getting those children into high quality care, so that their families could get back to work, could begin job training programs, and really begin building economic success for their future.”
Addressing a ‘persistent barrier’
Travis County is working with Workforce Solutions Capital Area, the nonprofit that also manages the state’s affordable childcare list, to connect families with Raising Travis County scholarships.
Marjorie Vese Villafranco, a family services manager for Workforce Solutions, said the funding is coming at a crucial time for new parents.
The Austin area has the most expensive childcare rates in the state, around $13,000annually for one kid. Childcare for kids 3 and under is the most expensive, and when parents are most likely to sacrifice school or work opportunities, Vese Villafranco said.
“This is one of the persistent barriers that keeps parents, and particularly women, from being able to stay in the workforce,” she said. “We know that every time we’re reaching out to families … when we say yes to them, they’re saying yes to employment opportunities.”
Vese Villafranco said if parents on the waitlist are struggling to find employment, Workforce Solutions will help connect them with job or training opportunities.
Supporting childcare centers
Once a child receives a scholarship, they can keep it until they are 13 as long as families maintain eligibility. Under the scholarship, families won’t pay more than 7% of their annual income on childcare.
Meunier said another top priority for the program was giving childcare centers funding to boost staff salaries or make needed upgrades. So far, $2.6 million has been sent out to 150 daycare centers, Meunier said.
For years, childcare centers that accept kids on state subsidies haven’t been paid the full cost of childcare, forcing daycare centers to pick up the difference. Mari Sillero, the director at Happy Hearts Bilingual Learning Center in South Austin, said daycare centers are also expensive to insure, and labor costs are high because of teacher-child ratio requirements.
“It’s the nature of the industry that we are in … we face financial struggles,” she said. “I don’t think that anybody who is in childcare can say that they are going to become millionaires being in this field.”
But Sillero said funding from Raising Travis County has made operations smoother.
In the past few months, Sillero was able to bump up the starting wages for new staff, give teachers more paid vacation time, offer trainings and hire a curriculum specialist. She said she’s seen a 30% increase in staff retention because of the changes.
“A teacher that was wearing three hats now doesn’t have to wear three hats,” she said. “Now they can wear two. Now they can wear one. The goal is, everybody wears one.”
